Centralized data storage systems, such as network attached storage devices, may use a plurality of disk drives and a plurality of I/O modules to increase data throughput and to provide for redundancy in the event of a disk drive failure and/or an I/O module failure. In order to protect the data included within these centralized data storage systems, data encryption methodologies may be utilized. For example, one or more data encryption keys may be used to encrypt and decrypt various data portions stored within the centralized data storage system.
Unfortunately, the use of multiple encryption keys may allow for the use of an incorrect encryption key. For example, encryption key “A” may be incorrectly used to encrypt data that should have been encrypted using encryption key “B”. Unfortunately, at sometime in the future when the system attempts to decrypt the data using encryption key “B”, the decryption step may fail due to the use of the incorrect encryption key. Depending on the strength of the encryption, this may result in the data being unrecoverable.